He stood derelict in the threshold, hood up and an absence of emotion in his half-concealed eyes. Insects fluttered around the lone illuminating light as the torrential deluge grew louder from above the motel roof. I’d just been bored out of my skull watching Jeopardy, recuperating after a particularly strenuous day at the pub. And now, this.
I muttered something to myself in disbelief. Suspending that disbelief, I asked him what he was doing here.
“Just let me in, J,” he said, with defeat in his wavering voice.
“Tell me,” I insisted, fully understanding that if I let this man into my residence, I may be kissing life goodbye.
“Let me in. Look, for Christ’s sake, J, I’m going to give you my piece. Real slow like.” He reached with shivering hands into his jacket pocket and produced a pistol, which he cautiously handed to me. I reluctantly grabbed it from his hand and shoved into my own pocket. I raised my eyebrows in astonishment for a few sluggish seconds while he stared with desperate intensity into my eyes. The rain became deafening. I shrugged affably and patted him on the back, now certain of his loyalty with this olive branch.
“Get the hell in here, Easy,” I said warmly. I grabbed him and took him into my temporary living space, this maroon carpeted, roach-infested hell on earth. The place reeked like some kind of must and the television had this yellow hue that really tied the whole looks-like-shit style of décor the designers of this motel had obviously been going for when they designed this place. He laughed and said something about how he wasn’t sure I’d have let him in as he made a beeline towards my refrigerator and snagged a brew.
“J, I’m in trouble, man. I’m talking end-of-my-world, shit-over-the-brim-and-into-the-fan trouble,” he said, his vaguely skeletal hand still shaking as he opened the beer and collapsed exhaustedly, landing supine on my tattered, uncomfortably stained couch.
“…What?” I asked, dreading knowing exactly what Easy needed from me of all people, after he’d ditched town in a hurry and left me face-down and bleeding after a vicious enfilade laid down by some schizophrenic crackhead he’d gotten on the bad side of. Easy himself was duplicitous, a belligerent drunk and a consistently using addict who’s refused any kind of abstemiousness I’ve suggested to him in my time knowing him. Every day he stayed with me, he’d brought fresh torment. He’d bring some septuagenarian prostitute home; he’d waste his time avoiding constant lethargy with a new research chemical he’d bring home on a weekly basis. And now, after dragging torment to my doorstep for months, after leaving me for dead, he comes to me, begging for help?
“You remember Big Joey, right? The Big Joey?”
“… Yeah,” I said, recalling Big Joey as an obscenely large figurehead of a local drug-trafficking syndicate, the kind of guy you’d avoid looking at the wrong way.
“Guess who got into some deep shit with him and his cronies?”
“You,” I said stoically.
“Damn right, J. And I’m coming to you, and I know I got no right comin’ to you; I got no right comin’ and askin’ for some help but J, I need you. Just help me out this one time. One time, J, and then you never got to see my face again.”
I looked at the clock, and sighed. This would be the last time. Easy had to get the hell out of my life. He’s my ex-partner for a good reason.
“Let’s get to work,” I said gruffly, grabbing my own piece from the coffee table, knowing exactly what I had to do. I didn’t want to do it. But such is life.
Submitted July 23, 2015 at 01:24PM by sorryallovertheplace http://ift.tt/1CRuJWQ WritingPrompts
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